Adaptation in teaching is an important part of building
whole, well rounded students. As a teacher adaptation means making connections
for my students to relate to. Teachers act as a guide that lead students into
making connections and building relevant connections to their lives.
Adaptation in education means that teachers provide the
skills that students need to problem solve and think broadly about certain
topics. Teachers should provide activities and experiences where students are
discovering ideas and learning things by doing. A teacher who teaches with
adaptation in mind provides real world examples and provide problems for
students to solve while providing opportunities and asking questions that use
higher level thinking.
What a great last line! I think adaptation is imperative to the real world as well. My students often have to read classic novels which were written at the earliest in the 1960s. Because I must follow the AP College Board reading list, I always want to know my students will see the relevance in everything they do in class. Adaptation also pushes me to make my class a place of learning which will go on into the future.
ReplyDeleteCourtney and Jodee, I strongly agree in the necessity to expose our students to content that they can connect to and make personal meaning from. I have, however, discovered the need to teach some of my students what it means to make that connection in the first place! I've had to be very intentional about modeling to them what a connection consists of and how it helps me to better understand what I'm learning. For some 2nd graders this is still something they struggle with and I think it also has to do with many of our students not having the rich experiences to make connections to. As teachers, we have to keep an open mind to this and help them to make connections no matter their experiences or background.
ReplyDeleteJodee
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you work all the time with making connections and meaning to personal lives. I bet that is getting harder to do with classics and a changing population.
Natalie,
I need to remind myself that at this point many of our students just need more experiences and it is my job to provide those opportunities for them. We definitely need to be explicit with even the most intuitive skills with our kids ;)